Australian spinner Adam Zampa has revealed a stirring mid-game address from Marcus Stoinis which he believes sparked the team's stunning turnaround at the ODI World Cup.
After losing its first two games of the World Cup in demoralising fashion, Australia has bounced back with four consecutive victories.
The first of those came against Sri Lanka, the match where Stoinis gave Zampa a mid-pitch rev-up.
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Sri Lanka's batters looked to be extending Australia's dismal run when they put on 125 runs for the opening wicket, but Stoinis was not fazed.
"Stoin was the best," Zampa recalled on The Grade Cricketer podcast.
"He came up to me and could see I was in pain, and I think he had a bit of a niggle and he was like, 'Mate, let's just have a crack hey, let's just have a f—ing go. Who cares if you do your back even worse and I do my hamstring, rip it off the bone, we're going to go home f—ing losers anyway if we don't have a crack, so let's go'.
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"That was probably my turning point, I was like, 'Yeah let's just have a crack, let's go'."
After being pummelled in the first two matches, the Sri Lanka contest proved to be a turning point for not only Australia, but Zampa himself. The wily leg-spinner has a phenomenal record against the 1996 champions and spun his web around them again, finishing with figures of 4-47 off eight overs.
"We just told ourselves to stay in the competition because we knew we were in a compromising position if this game gets away from us, then, 3-0 with six games left is not great," he said.
"So we just stayed in it, and we know with a team like Sri Lanka if you get on top of them, the game can change really easily. So there wasn't really panic stations or anger, it was just 'we need to try and stay in the contest'."
Zampa followed the four-wicket haul against Sri Lanka with two more against Pakistan and the Netherlands, before adding three more in the nail-biting win over New Zealand on Saturday to be the competition's joint leading wicket-taker along with Pakistan's Shaheen Shah Afridi.
Australia is currently fourth on the World Cup table behind India, South Africa and New Zealand and has the chance to extend its winning streak to five matches when it faces England on Saturday night.
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